Cuba: Tch, can we make peace?

Lin Miao: At this very moment, you've got to be kidding me, right?

Lin Miao had done so much prep work, even had the New American Intelligence Bureau's agents embedded in Cuba cooperate, just to successfully stage this missile attack. How the hell could he stop just because they threw a bit of money at him?

Tens of millions might be a lot for an individual, but for a rapidly growing company it's really nothing. Lin Miao couldn't care less about this money right now.

It's all going to be mine sooner or later, so why rush it?

After kicking the Cubans out, Lin Miao turned to Schmidt and started talking about the attack on Cuba.

This is the tragedy of the weak, although the Cuban drug lords themselves don't think they're weak.

On paper, if all the Cuban traffickers united and concentrated all their military strength, they'd absolutely be a rather considerable force.

But neither the New American Federation nor the people behind Cuba would ever allow Cuba to be unified, because only chaos lets them fight among themselves, laying the groundwork for those people to remote‑control Cuba for profit.

They won't even allow Cuba to develop its own heavy industry, and they've kept Cuba's economy tied to drugs and cigars.

All weapons and equipment are entirely dependent on imports; light and heavy industry are a total trainwreck.

If victory and defeat could be decided just by looking at surface‑level military strength, then Major General Ka wouldn't have gotten beaten like a dog back in the day.

Don't be fooled by how New America ranks around twentieth or thirtieth in GDP; North Korea's GDP is also very low, but that doesn't stop it from treating the economically developed South Korea like a dog.

New America knows this, the European Community knows this, the only ones who don't are the Cubans.

They really seem to think that with the gear they bought they can rule the roost, arrogant enough to fire missiles at Lin Miao in front of everyone, and even think they can smooth it over with a few tens of millions. Dream on.

Schmidt frowned hard as he looked at the first batch of applications Lin Miao sent over.

It wasn't that Lin Miao was opening his lion's mouth, trying to use the attack on Cuba on New America's behalf as an excuse to jack up the price; it was that this guy's demands were honestly a bit strange.

There were only a small number of weapons and equipment on the list; the rest weren't cutting‑edge cyberware, and he hadn't even requested Military Technology to go in first and plow through Cuba's key military facilities.

What he wanted was industrial support, industrial aid.

Its scope was extremely broad, covering 43 projects including arms industry, aviation, electronics, aerospace, medical, steel, non‑ferrous metals, energy, and so on.

He not only wanted ready‑made production equipment, but also technical experts sent over to provide support.

Just looking at this stuff made Schmidt's eyelids twitch.

This wasn't opening a lion's mouth anymore, this was straight‑up delusional.

There were plenty of things in there that money couldn't buy at all.

Why don't I just pack up Military Technology and sell it to you while I'm at it?

Previously he'd still been a bit bored, but now he tossed the list onto the table and said,

"Impossible! These things could practically support a small country, and you haven't even set foot on Cuban soil yet. This better be an April Fool's joke, otherwise I can only treat you as the joke."

Even Schmidt felt Lin Miao had gone insane if he thought New America would agree to these terms.

"Calm down, Minister of Defense."

Lin Miao poured him a glass of liquor, his expression completely different from the arrogant swagger he'd shown in front of the Cubans earlier—now he was cool and rational.

"You know as well as I do how important Cuba is, even without me spelling it out. And we're not asking New America to pay everything in one go."

Right now Lin Miao was sitting on a lot of technical data, but data is data; it can't magically turn into real productive capacity, and those technologies absolutely couldn't be implemented in Night City in the form of physical factories.

Too many people, too many eyes, too easy to cause trouble—not to mention he himself didn't have that capability.

Take cyberware for example: if Lin Miao hadn't partnered with Kangtao Corporation to build factories, he wouldn't even have the capacity to mass‑produce standardized cyberware.

Aside from a few sectors that stemmed from system‑provided application facilities and software‑driven industries like Mewtwo, almost all other industries were completely backward, with zero market competitiveness.

To break this shackle, he had to get aid from Military Technology.

"Since New America has already decided to eliminate this piece of the European Community's chess they planted in their backyard, we'll go all in. This war is bound to drag on for a long time; it's going to be a serious test for both of us."

"That's still not a reason for New America to give you this aid."

Schmidt picked up his glass and took a slow sip, then heard Lin Miao drop a bomb:

"So I'm going to occupy the whole of Cuba."

"Pff—"

Schmidt sprayed the liquor out of his mouth, staring at Lin Miao in shock, then immediately understood what he meant.

"You're going to use these aid projects on Cuba?"

That, for the Minister of Defense, was actually not so hard to swallow.

Horizon Corporation was going to take part in the war on Cuba, and they'd be the ones actually sending troops. New America had to find a way to maintain Horizon Corporation's combat power and loyalty.

Make them the bridgehead, fighting a proxy war against the European Community on Cuban soil.

So if the territories taken from Cuba were allocated to Horizon Corporation, and New America assisted in building them up, then even just for the sake of those assets, Horizon Corporation would have no choice but to fight those drug lords—and the European Community that would come later—to the bitter end on that land.

And of course, these projects would only be feasible if Horizon Corporation first captured part of Cuba's territory.